I installed an RTX 4090 yesterday and am very impressed with the clarity I can achieve now with the Pimax 8kx but it seems like no matter what settings I select, I cannot get frame rate over 26FPS. I have played with Pittool res, OpenXR toolkit scaling, LOD, etc, to no avail.
My current settings that seem to generate the best visuals are:
TAA 100
Most things on Ultra or High except grass off
OpenXR FSR 85%
Pitool 1.25
PP off / smoothing off 60 hz
I tried DLSS but it had no FPS benefit and the visuals were decidedly worse.
I may just not have the CPU to do any better. But the crazy thing is even with Pitool at 1.0 and FSR at 75-80% in OpenXR, still not getting above 30FPS and GPU backs off to like 50%. With Pitool 1.25 and FSR at 85%, GPU is like 80-90% but still 25-26FPS.
I also get this horrible flickering at dawn or dusk on the horizon if there is any terrain. Mountains blink on and off like crazy until the sun comes up above the horizon. It’s really immersion-killing.
I feel like with the 3080ti I had before the 4090, (of course at lower res) I could easily maintain 35FPS or so, but have not seen it go that high since installing the 4090 regardless of settings. Any advice? Do I just have to buy a new MB/CPU do any better? Like I said the visuals are stunning - can finally read all the gages in the DC6 without leaning in, it looks spectacular inside. It looks “meh” outside, and while it’s playable at 25FPS, it isn’t great. Was hoping for nice upgraded visuals (which I definitely got) along with a bump in FPS to 40-50 or so…
Here is a forum post that I started showing my setup and getting lots of input…it is a little outdated as far as the OpenXR and PimaxVR tools is concerned, but it might help you.
Yeah, I had read your post a few times and tried to duplicate but to no avail. Whatever I do I can’t seem to achieve a higher frame rate. Maybe my CPU is just not up to the task.
TLDR - my CPU was going into thermal overload and limiting my FPS regardless of settings due to a faulty CPU cooling system.
Turns out I had a major CPU heat issue - I bought my PC assembled (first time I’ve done that in 30+ years of flight simming - usually build my own, but was only way at the time to acquire a 3080ti). Long story short, the stock CPU cooler they gave me was ■■■■, and to top that off, the thermal paste was only covering about I would say 30% of the chip when I removed the pump from the CPU. When I started investigating, I was getting temps of 100C plus on the chip during load tests. I had never really monitored my temps before in a year of using this system (big mistake). I can’t believe the system wasn’t crashing or the chip melting!
I just put in a new corsair liquid cooled system, and it dropped the idle temp of the cpu by 20C to around 35, and now during load testing it never goes above about 65C. Booted up flight sim and now I am getting fantastic frame rates, comparatively while CPU temps stay at 60-65 after 30 mins in the sim -
with DLSS set to quality, I can get 50FPS+ with pitool set at 1.0. About 40FPS with pitool set to 1.25, which is almost good enough but not quite in terms of fidelity of gauges. DLSS is almost there for me but just not quite. So, best setting for me is now pitool at 1.0, TAA in FS at 125, normal FOV, LOD at around 200, CAS in OpenXr TK and using PimaxXr. With this, I was getting 29-33FPS over Chicago and at O’hare which is livable, and getting 38-42FPS everywhere else. Thats with most settings in FS to ULTRA. It also seems to have cleared up the weird artifacts I was seeing on the horizon, though more testing needed on that front.
Now GPU usage is still low (60-70%), leaving a lot on the table still I am sure and will continue to tweak to find best tradeoffs to increase GPU usage will keeping framerates locked at 30+.
I just tried a new option for better FPS…I have everything at ULTRA like yours but I set the trees at HIGH and got a few more FPS and it does not look bad at all…just thought you might want something else to try if not getting the FPS you want. I also am using TAA now set to 85 and the panels still look good in cockpit and the outside views are still nice…very little jittering during flight
I have 4090+7800x3d and i was dissaponted for Meta Quest 3. Will 8KX look so much better than standalone VR headset (pico4, quest 3) if MSFS is the only game to play? Do i get constant 45fps with my hardware?